Since last night, I've seen and read a great deal of coverage of the negative response undecided dial groups seem to have had to McCain attacking Obama as naive or not understanding. Much of the analysis has centered around the idea that people object to the negativity. I agree that many people object to the negativity, but I think many are missing the key dynamic at play.

As most analysts have noted over the last several weeks, when the subject is personality, the candidates are tied, or McCain is a little ahead. When the subject matter is policy, Obama has a significant advantage. The reason for the the former can be debated. The reason for the latter is clear: by a 2-to-1 margin, people agree with Obama that the Iraq war was a mistake; by a 2-to-1 margin, people want a timetable for withdrawing our troops; by a 2-to-1 margin, people want the US to engage in active diplomacy with adversarial governments such as Iran and North Korea, and; the list goes on. Recognizing that the majority of Republicans agree with McCain's positions, that means the independents agree with Obama's positions by and even larger margin.

So back to those dial groups- when an undecided voter was listening to McCain say Obama was naive about Iran, what they heard was that THEY were naive about Iran; when McCain said Obama didn't understand what would happen if we withdraw our troops from Iraq, he was saying that those undecideds didn't understand.

I don't think many people cared that McCain was condescending to Obama- McCain was condescending to Obama's ideas- ideas that most of them share- in short, he was condescending to them.